ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Inflammation Pharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1595059
Determination of nine prostaglandins in arachidonic acid metabolic pathway with UHPLC-QQQ-MS/MS and application to in vitro and in vivo inflammation models
Provisionally accepted
- 1The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
- 2Affiliated Hospital of Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
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Background: Prostaglandins play a vital role as crucial metabolites and inflammatory indicators within the arachidonic acid (AA) metabolic pathway. Conventional assays typically focus on a single inflammatory indicator, while multi-index detection entails a large number of samples. Methods: In this study, an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QQQ-MS/MS) method was newly developed for simultaneous quantitative analysis of nine AA metabolites, including prostaglandin F2β (PGF2β), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), prostaglandin E1 (PGE1), prostaglandin D1 (PGD1), prostaglandin D2 (PGD2), prostaglandin A2 (PGA2), prostaglandin J2 (PGJ2), prostaglandin B2 (PGB2), and prostaglandin A1 (PGA1), in the supernatant of LPS-induced RAW264.7 cells and the serum samples of adjuvant-induced arthritis (AIA) rats. Results: The newly established UHPLC-QQQ-MS/MS method successfully and rapidly quantified the contents of nine prostaglandins simultaneously. The methodology was validated. The levels of PGE2, PGD1, PGD2, PGA2, and PGJ2 in the LPS-induced RAW264.7 cells group were higher than those in blank group. At the same time, the levels of these PGs decreased significantly (P <0.01, vs. LPS-induced group) after the positive drug (dexamethasone) intervention. On the 14th day of AIA modeling, the paw volume of the AIA rats was significantly enlarged (P <0.01, vs. blank group), and the serum samples from the AIA group showed significantly increased levels of PGE2, PGD2, and PGA2 (P <0.01, vs. blank group), suggesting the emergence of arthritis. The levels of other prostaglandins were below the limit of quantification. Conclusion: The method established in this study for determining nine prostaglandins in the AA metabolic pathway with UHPLC-QQQ-MS/MS embodied the advantages of a low amount of sample requiring, a simple pretreatment process, and the rapid and efficient simultaneous quantification of multiple inflammatory factors. It provided a novel assay method for the pharmacological study of the AA metabolic pathway.
Keywords: Arachidonic Acid, Prostaglandins, PGE2, PGD2, UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS, Inflammation
Received: 18 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Huang, Wang, Yang, Wang, Wang and He. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fan He, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
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